[r0naa]

The current situation in France is making me very conflicted about privacy and public liberties.

I am a strong believer of the value of privacy for a modern society. I even want to dedicate my life to help building privacy enhancing technologies and censorship-resistant networks. Because I think that an "advanced" world can only thrive if information is unrestricted, or unstoppable.

But today I face a dilemma. The dilemma of choosing between freedom and privacy, and security.

I am French, and have a lot of family in Paris. My brother lives two streets from the Bataclan and lost one of his friends. Some of my friends lost 5, sometimes 10 people that night. Imagine loosing two thirds of your group of friends in a few hours. This is frightening.

When I look at France. I see a great country, with a lot of humanity and when I look at the French, I see a freedom loving people who share a love for good food, good music and generally speaking, the good things that life has to offer.

But I also see the failure of my country in the suburbs. With entire neighborhoods that have been left uncontrolled by the government at some point, and who never went back to that state despite lots of efforts. These neighborhoods are rigged with crime and violence, and have been a fertile environment for religious lunatics to grow stronger for the last twenty years.

And I have mixed feelings. The French National Assembly has extended the state of urgency to three months. Strengthening the regalian power of the state and weakening the counter-balancing power of the Judicial branch.

Hundreds of raids have been coordinated through France, most being in those "uncontrolled areas". And it seems to work.

Which prompt me to think that this might be for the better. For the most part of my "short" life, I have thought that a people should never "trade freedom for security". But I have come to the, perhaps wrong, conclusion that there can't be "freedom without security" either.

Maybe we should give up some freedom to let the "good guys" crackdown hard on the "bad guys".

But maybe it isn't. Maybe fear is clouding my judgement.

[nitrogen]

I'm very sorry to hear about the losses your friends and family have endured. My comments below are not meant to dismiss those losses.

So, here are some questions to ask if you want to prevent fear from clouding your judgment of the security vs. freedom question:

If the authorities knew where they needed to raid already, why didn't they raid there before the attacks?

On the other hand, if they have all of the surveillance we read about in the news and more, why weren't the attacks prevented? How will more of the same surveillance work any better than the massive amount already in place?

Finally, how do you trust the authorities claims now that their emergency techniques work, if you didn't trust their techniques before?

Again, none of this is meant to belittle the losses sustained or the seriousness of the attacks. But I believe that terrorism is a social and political problem first, a criminal problem second, and a surveillance problem least. So the solutions need to be long-term social and political moves to counteract the economic and ideological conditions that breed terrorists.

[matthewmacleod]

I do understand your viewpoint – theres an unfairness in large-scale terrorist attacks that's very hard to deal with, and commentators can all too often be a bit shallow in dismissing that.

The thing is… there's little evidence that limiting privacy would prevent terrorist attacks. Maybe unless you are talking about a complete elimination of all private communication—something which I think most people would rightly reject outright—then there will always be private channels available for communication. I think most people will accept that some form of government access to communication is sometimes warranted – but that such access must be strictly controlled, judicially overseen, and limited in scope and time. Previous experience as a society suggests that any excessive government power will be abused.

The issue here is not one of a government which is limited in its power to 'crack down' on terrorism. It's what you've identified – neighbourhoods riddled with poverty and crime. There are a breeding ground for disenfranchisement, and we know it's the tactical approach of groups like Daesh to encourage and recruit from these disenfranchised areas.

You can only realistically solve this problem by solving disenfranchisement. That's a complex socioeconomic issue, though – and not something I have the answer to. But the idea that this is 'freedom vs. privacy' doesn't stand up to examination.

[yup123]

I'm really curios, why do you think that less privacy and more government control means safety?

Suppose that this less privacy equals greater safety, is it smart allowing the government to have this sort of power over us? Sure maybe the current government is awesome and really wants to keep us "safe", what if the next president is an evil tyrant who suddenly has all that power.

People can ultimately use any tool to do evil imho, would you like the government to control who can buy knives and cars for example? both of them can be used to do evil acts.

[EGreg]

I wrote this to Pavel Durov, and maybe it will help bring some more clarity to the freedom vs security debate:

Listen, as a fellow social platform developer and someone who has to seriously consider these issues, I have a suggestion. Why don't you consider terrorism as an epidemiological model, using your network to spread a certain undesirable virus/meme (whose symptoms include violence). Then you can borrow from known bio literature about battling viruses:

Markers (based on previous samples

Antibodies (preventing recipients from getting infectious messages)

Obstacles (making difficulty of spreading organically harder)

And work to promote herd immunity. You can add this to the system without any government or yourself being aware of the contents of the messages. Have the computer system be like an organization that maintains herd immunity in its population, while at the same time (being electronic) having zero interest in reporting people and message content to others.

One of the first things you'll notice is mass media (one to many transmission taken to the extreme) is the biggest risk to herd immunity. Free speech like every other right may have limits... speech to 100 people may be totally unenmbered but speech to 1,000,000 comes with responsibility, or else it's just a freerider on a system. YOU Pavel have a responsibility since your code is your (meta-)"speech" once such a large audience engages with your product!

Stop shutting down ISIS channels. It's GOOD that they use your software. Look at the incident of Craigslist shutting down its prostitution section -- people just moved elsewhere. Instead, think about whether "right to free speech" and "right to privacy" must be absolute or whether there is justification to BALANCE them against public welfare at ANY point on the continuum. Perhaps if the system can detect with good confidence some violent speech, it is better to LET IT HAPPEN and alert the operators so they can refer it to the authorities. Either way, Pavel, as long as the developers are few they have the power and can be bullied by governments. So use this power to set the lead: build VIRUS DETECTION not BANNING into the system, and only drop privacy in the case of some imminent danger. Make the networks have an immune system. But do not simply make people move somewhere else.